One of Those Days
by J Sumner
Summary: 2/3 of The Lone Gunmen are obsessed with a kid's show - Frohike tries to figure out why.


Disclaimer: You know the drill. Chris Carter, 1013, Fox - all those guys own Our Boys, body and soul (damn, and I wanted Langly's body!). They aren't mine, never were, and never will be. If they were, Langly wouldn't be a 32-year-old virgin, Byers and Fro would be getting the girls they want, Yves would have more to do, and Jimmy...well, okay, Jimmy would be pretty much the same. No copyright infringement intended, I'm just borrowing them. Same for Blue's Clues. Don't sue me, I'm a graduate student in theatre. It goes without saying that I have no money, and probably never will.

And the Blue's Clues Fruit Snacks are mine. You can't have any.

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Gunmen HQ

12:30 PM

It was one of those days.

Langly was distracted by something on TV when he let me in. Not a good idea- what if it hadn't actually been me, but someone in disguise? Someone bent on sabotage? Someone who wanted to blow the building up and wipe the Lone Gunmen off the map? I was just about to tell him this when I got a look at what he was watching. It was disturbing to say the least.

It wasn't anything gruesome - no alien autopsies here. It wasn't even a skin flick. Actually, if it had been that, I would have understood the fixation. Yelled at him for being careless, but understood all the same. We've got some pretty good movies, after all. But no, this was something entirely different.

Little talking cartoon animals and household appliances were talking to each other, and to add to the chaos, a man in a green striped shirt came on the screen and started talking to them. Not an animated man, either. A real man, as 3D as the rest of them were not, and whose name was apparently Steve. It was reminding me a lot of a bad acid trip.

"Langly, what the hell are you watching?" I asked. No response. He had gone to sit on the couch, and his eyes were starting to glaze over behind his horn rims. "Langly?" I said again, shaking him this time. Still nothing. "Punk ass!" I yelled, which worked for exactly one second. He came out of the trance for precisely one second; long enough to say "blue," and then I lost him to the TV again.

"Blue? What are you talking about?" Too late - he was sucked back in. This was worse than the Barney fixation of '93. Byers and I had foolishly thought that he'd outgrown that kind of thing. He didn't watch Barney videos anymore; he had never really watched Teletubbies except to prove that the show was actually a form of subliminal mind controlÉ But there he was, eyes riveted on a blue dog on the TV, a faint idiotic smile replacing the smirk that was normally on his face. The boy ain't right. I think he needs to get laid - after 32 years with nothing but a little hand action, the tension must make you a little Fruit Loops. Byers doesn't think that's the problem, but then again, he isn't exactly a Lone GunStud, either.

Right as I was thinking of him, the conservative member of our little group appeared on the hall monitor. He does that a lot. If we hadn't already tested him for it, I'd swear that Byers was psychic sometimes. I let him in, and started to brief him on the new developments when I realized he wasn't paying attention to me. He was looking over my shoulder at Langly.

"Did I miss it?" he asked as he hurried over to the couch. "I got us chips and soda."

"Cool," Langly said, never taking his eyes from the screen. "They found the first clue already. It was a table. But they haven't sung the Mail Song yet," he added. Whatever the Mail Song might be.

"Good, that's my favorite part," said Byers. 

"Mine, too," Langly said before they both lapsed into silence. Langly's idiotic little grin seemed to have duplicated itself on Byers's face, and it didn't look good there, either. They were quiet for a few more minutes, and I figured I would do some surfing on the Net to check out what this little addiction was all about. Langly getting sucked in by TV was one thing; it happened on a fairly regular basis. FCC Boy Byers getting sucked in was something else entirely.

I had just made it over to the computers when music started. Annoyingly cheerful music. And then something happened that I never would have expected. Both of them, hippy boy Langly and clean cut Byers, started singing along. "Here's the mail, it never fails, it make me want toÉ" It makes me want to **what**? This called for desperate measures. I picked up the phone and started to dial up the lovely Agent Scully. I knew she was busy, but this was an emergency.

And no sooner had I picked up the phone than Jimmy showed up. Out of nowhere, as usual. He at least managed to say hello before making a beeline for the TV. Three lost to the black hole known only as "blue." Funny thing was, the smile that made the other two look so stupid actually made Jimmy seem smarter. For once, Langly didn't greet him with any snide comments, just told him to move over so he could see the screen. At least, I'm pretty sure that's what "Muvovvercannsetv" translates as.

Scully wasn't answering, and the Twit Trio was singing again. I looked on the internet, but have you ever tried to search with only the keywords "blue" and "cartoon"? It ain't easy, I'm tellin' you that. I was getting bubkis, and decided that a little hard research was in order. In other words, I sat down in front of the TV with them.

Jimmy at this point was babbling about seeing a clue, and the idiot's ringleader (Steve, in case you've forgotten) was responding to him. Sort of. There was actually a chorus of children's voices dubbed into the show, and Steve was responding to that. Jimmy was just yelling along with them. I looked over at Langly and Byes and was somehow not surprised to hear them mumbling about seeing a clue, too. No idea what they meant by that - all I saw was a blue paw print.

The blue paw print was apparently pretty important, though, because that moron Steve got really excited when he saw it. I'm talking excited in an unhealthy way. The kind of excited most men get after a trip to a peep show. Okay, maybe not **that** excited, but it wasn't normal, that was for sure. The next stop was a trip to a big red chair (which Steve called a "Thinking Chair" - good God, does the stupidity ever stop?) where he sat and looked over a notebook. The notebook had drawings like a four year old would make. None of them made any sense to me, but never fear, the merry band of morons to my left knew what they were, and suddenly an argument broke out between the three of them.

"Blue wants to go camping!" Jimmy said, wildly excited about it.

"No, she doesn't, you idiot," Langly shot him down. "What does a table have to do with camping?"

"I think it's a picnic," Byers said, quietly. The other two looked at him as if he were insane. Well, at least I wasn't the only one thinking that.

"Can't be," Langly said. "You don't need a flashlight for picnics."

"Well, then, what do you think it is?" Byers asked, irritated.

"I think that Blue wants to take the flashlight and beat Mr. Salt down for the Fascist bastard he is," Langly declared. The little idiot grin had disappeared and been replaced by the trademark smirk. I couldn't remember what was so bad about the smile now.

"Oh, no, Langly. They wouldn't do that on this show," Jimmy said, but he looked worried. As if maybe it could happen on this show.

"Jimmy's right, Langly. Where do you get these ideas? You're always wrong, anyway."

"Maybe, but that's what Blue would do if they let her," he answered, smirk still there.

I couldn't take it any longer. "It's a cartoon, for Christ sakes!" I exploded. All of them turned to look at me, their argument forgotten.

"You shouldn't say that," Jimmy said, his lower lip trembling.

"Yeah, Fro. That was just wrong," Langly chimed in.

Byers just gave me that "how could you" look of his. I sighed. "Whatever."

The three of them looked back to the TV, and damned if the little dog wasn't waving goodbye.

"We missed it!" Jimmy yelled. "Now we'll never know! Man, Frohike, how could you do that?"

They all had murder in their eyes, and I was just starting to think that my life could be in danger when I was saved by the bell. The buzzer to be more precise. I ran to the monitor, checked it quickly, and let Yves in. Thank God.

"All right," she said in very even tones. That's always a bad sign from her. "Which one of you called and asked for Blue's Clues fruit snacks? This is the **last** time I do grocery shopping for you. Got it?" She held a box out in front of her, and the other three pounced on it. Crisis averted, at least from my standpoint. I shrugged my shoulders at her, one of those "I had nothing to do with this" gestures. And looking at the box of fruit snacks, something hit me.

"Blue's the **dog**!" I yelled.

Langly responded. "Well, yeah," he said. "What'd you think she was?" I wanted to slap him. 

It was one of those days. 

(Fin)

Like it? Hate it? Thought it was way too silly? Lemme know - I've never done this before. julz91@hotmail.com


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